I guess for me the one thing that has me going nutz over the whole music server thing is the total and complete lack of standardization.

I already have all my and my wifes CD's on HDs in AIFF (I'm a Mac guy) so totally uncompressed. I can, in theory convert them to anything I want at any time now, but many servers will not allow me to use or import these files to them.

If they could reach an agreement on a standard, all the problems would go away (granted all the market share for the high end guys might too but it would be great for me!)

For now, I will keep my simple computer based server for day to day casual listening. I really don't want to swap in and out all those discs again. I have already done it almost three times now, the first time I screwed up my computer early on and lost all the data, no big deal, only ~1-200 discs in by then. The second time I did it in MP3 @ 192k, OK, great for an iPod but not much else, so then I decided as HD space is so cheap to do it completely uncompressed and this is where I am now.

Just remembered I need to buy another external HD to back all this up to....

It would be great if they could reach a standard. I would be easy for all of us. kenny, I have a question for you, I`m jumping into the I - pod game now, as currently I do not have one. Just my stepson and daughter. I`ve decided I could use it to archive a lot of my old classic jazz and soul music. Would you get the updated Nano with video, or go for the main I - pod at the top of the food chain?

I`m thinking maybe my wife will bless me for Fathers Day?? I have a Dell PC, so I guess everything will be in lossless, not AIFF, right?